Gardening for Cats

This year, we’ve started really working on our backyard. After nine years in our house, we have done plenty inside the house, and almost nothing to change the outdoor spaces. The people who lived here before us took excellent care of this house, including the yard. We (and by we, I mean mostly my husband) have kept everything alive, and my husband has kept the lawn looking flawless, and that’s it.

So though I know the people who lived here before us were passionate about their yard (shortly after moving in, my neighbors told me they had seen the people trimming grass with scissors once), I couldn’t get enthused about it. It’s not that surprising. When we bought our first house, I distinctly remember telling my husband that I would not be mowing the yard. And this yard certainly did nothing to make me change my mind. It’s very nice and spacious, but it was also very boring, and there were a few elements to it that I actively despised. Somehow, I managed to filter all this out whenever I went outside.

But when my husband said he really wanted to do something about the backyard this year, something switched inside me. Yes, I wanted to do stuff! I was ready to go digging in the dirt and MAKE CHANGES. Maybe I’d watched too much Monty Don. Maybe I finally had the mental and physical bandwidth to dedicate to it. Maybe I was fed up with subconsciously being annoyed every time I went outside. No matter what it was, I knew my first victim would be the flower bed alongside our fence.

Our fence only goes around our pool area, so this flower bed is actually kind of in the middle of the yard. It had horrible plastic edging that had warped over the years and had turned into a strange wave down the side. It was filled with lava rock. It alternated between tall grass and a hideous plant that I didn’t bother to identify.

It was a long and difficult process to clear it all out, and if I never see another piece of lava rock in my life, it will be too soon. But I always knew what I wanted it to be - a cutting garden.

I love having fresh bouquets in my house, but I hate spending money on them. But once I heard of a cutting garden (probably on some Monty Don show), I thought it sounded amazing. An endless supply of fresh flowers for your table! What more could you want?

I came down to earth a little when I realized quite how long the space was - probably way too much space for just flowers. So we purchased some Emerald Green Arborvitae trees to plant throughout the space, which would give us even better privacy for the pool than the tall grass. I also did more research, and it talked about planting the seeds every two weeks, which also seemed like something I wasn’t going to do. So I settled on choosing a few flowers that would bloom for most of the growing season and grow back after cutting.

And while I’m trying my hardest to go with only native plants in the rest of the garden, the ultimate deciding factor for what could be in my cutting garden is that all plants had to be safe for cats. Though Luna never touches any other houseplants or bouquets (she is the best cat in the world, remember?), I didn’t want to take any risks.

After some Googling (where I primarily used this ASPCA list and this list), I chose Gerber Daisies, Snapdragons, Sunflowers, and Cosmos. I was able to find some cosmos (white and pink), daisies (two shades of pink), and snapdragons (also pink!) that were already good-sized plants at a garden center. I purchased sunflower seeds, which did so well — until I transplanted them from pots into the ground. Then the little family of bunnies in my yard ate every last one of them. And I’m talking at least 40 of them! So I went back and bought some more seeds. This time, I put the pots into spare space in our vegetable garden that already has a fence around it. They are doing well, but haven’t flowered yet.

Our fence-side garden

So now the sad-looking space along my fence looks great. I smile every time I pull into the driveway. I’ve gotten a few nice boquets. The butterflies seem to love the Cosmos. But here’s the surprising part — as a cutting garden, I would say this project has been a failure. The Gerber Daisies, by far the nicest plant I have in terms of looking nice in a bouquet, don’t grow back fast enough. The Cosmos last no more than one or two days after cutting. They also grow on a stem in a group of 3, so frequently the stem I cut is very short in order to leave the buds on the other two branches, which makes it difficult to add to a vase. The snapdragons are pretty, but the buds don’t all open at the same time. This means I’m either cutting prematurely before all the buds have opened, or too late once blooms have already started to fall. And the sunflowers, well, I can’t plant them in the actual bed because they’ll be eaten, and they haven’t bloomed, so I guess TBD on that part.

Overall, as a novice gardener, I am considering this a learning experience. All of these plants are considered annuals in my growing zone, so that means I’ll need to make a new plan for next year. Right now, my current guess is that I will probably replace these flowers with some kind of native plants to complement the rest of my garden and change it up into a perennial space. Whatever it ends up being in the future, the space has at least brought my joy each time I’ve gone outside this year, and I’ve been so thrilled to have a fresh look and try new things. Gardening for cats may not be my new hobby, but regular gardening sure is and I’m having fun!